Saturday, March 1, 2014

Not Just A Handful Of GIFs

After another busy week of development, there's a good amount of progress to show. First of all, here's a GIF portraying the character creation process in Bloodhunt. This GIF is not just another mockup or conceptual artwork made in Photoshop, it's the first in-game footage of the game. So keep in mind that I'm still working on pretty much everything.

The video shows the basic two steps of character creation in Bloodhunt.

Choose your clan, and

Spend your free points in the character sheet.

I've implemented all 7 vampire clans of the Camarilla (the Sabbat and Independent clans will have to wait). There's still some pixel portraits missing (Gangrel, Toreador, Ventrue) but in the character sheet the Attributes and Abilities are fully functional. You can add or remove free points just as in Bloodlines, with a simple click on the circle. I've skipped Huminaty and Disciplines for now, since I want to focus on basic mechanics first.
Also, here's another in-game GIF portraying a fundamental aspect of the game: dice rolls. Seeing your dice being rolled should be a key aspect of any RPG, in my humble opinion. Just as in tabletop RPGs, throwing dice is a moment of tension, when the player faces the odds of fate and cosmic randomness. Why remove this epic moment from the player experience? Also, I think most players already know how Vampire: the Masquerade system works behind the hoods. Showing the rolls just makes each game decision more transparent. I know how many dice are being rolled, and I can see my failures and successes being a direct result of the randomness of dice, not the game playing tricks on me. So let's see 3 dice rolls of Strength + Brawl against difficulty 6.

There's still a lot to polish in the dice rolling animation, but again we have the basic system well set in place. In less than 2 seconds we can see 4 dice being rolled, easily identifying successes and failures.